Blogged-out

From the start I hated blogs. I always though they were stupid a idea....but somehow I learned to live with em. But now im pissed. It seems lately every search i do, no matter how common/wierd, I end up on atleast 3 or 4 blogs sifting through piles of peoples **** (thank god for ctrl-f), only to not find the information im looking for.

What really gets under my skin is when people publish "I found these search words in my logs".....which is totally useless and just clutters my search results. I wish ppl would ban the bot's or something. I mean no one cares what the hell they're talkin bout (probably not even their own friends). What happened to the good ol days of email, instant message and IRC?

Im even more annoyed from a design standpoint. I mean they are mostly all the same 2 col css layout w/ muted colors and an oversized header. Not that I expect most people to be designers, but im just tired of looking at the same thing over and over again.

And the name BLOG is like sandpaper on my ass. I hate it. Its like the sound when you step on a frog.

// blog rant ended.
(but really, the're killing google and the hopes of finding information quickly)

Well i'm not the biggest fan of blogs either.
But I think they work in 2 ways...
They are there for your friends to read.
At least for me it's nice to read what is going on back in Finland while I'm here in Sweden.
And then I like photoblogs.
It's a nice way to show photos, I would want to post more of my photos but I don't want to put them in to my portfolio and I don't want to just put a link to them from my site....
Then I think photoblogs are nice...
But otherwise, I'm not that fond of them either...

A lot of them look similar because of the default templates that come with most of the blogging software packages. And really, all web sites look the same anyway if you want to be picky about it. they all either have one, two, or three columns, with a nav at the top or sides, and a header and footer. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion. All books have pages with a binding on the left. It wouldn't be very cool if someone decided to be "creative" and publish a book with a binding on the right, or in scroll form, would it? All magazines look basically the same. All newspapers definitely look the same.

And I have the opposite view about search results that you do. Most of the time when you are searching for something and find a blog hit, they'll link to the source that you're looking for, as well as any other related items, their own experience, work arounds, etc. Of course that all depends on what you're searching for I suppose. And not all blogs are about what people had for breakfast. I mean sites like www.gizmodo.com and www.engadget.com are technically blogs, but they are interesting and always have the best information anywhere. Much better than any other site you could find on the 'net.

And another reason google likes blogs so much is because they are perfect for being spidered... they are all xhtml css, they are updated really frequently, they have a lot of links going in and out, they provide archives to old content, etc. it's really the fault of bad designers on other web sites that blogs are rated so highly. if other sites weren't full of Flash and 50 images per page and "clever" designs and navigation schemes, and 10 nested tables and frames and iframes, etc., then they might show up before blogs in search results. but, they are too cool for school and have to be "creative", which makes it harder for google to spider the site. not to mention most blogs aren't full of ads and links to content that no one cares about. They are generally focused on one topic, and certainly focused on one topic per page, which is another thing google loves.

Blogs can be pretty cool, i like reading political blogs (and run one with several other authors).

I don't like the diary stuff.

Nos.

I've been discovering some kewl stuff with blogs. The idea of having a quick and easy way to publish information on the web is the beauty of it (and the bane as far as you're concerned). I think it will help to create MORE interesting content on the web in the long run, with new offshoots like iPodcasting, etc. coming out of the blogshpere.

For every interesting blog out there, there are 20 boring ones that noone cares about. The thing I hate the most about them is that they are now relied upon as source of information for real news outlets. There one show devoted entirely to blogs on CNN, I think I've seen it flipping around from time to time.

Oh man, my photologs get the weirdest search hits to. To name a few:

animaniacs torrent screenie
girl boy sex **** photo screenie You may have to replace the **** with the appropriate fsck word.
hentai schoolgirl screenie
japanese asian wife thinks screenie
tentacles anime screenie

I should refine my original statement to include most 'diary' type blogs. I still hate pretty much all of em, BUT i can somewhat understand the techinical/specific topic ones (though i still hate the design). My biggest bitch is they're making searching more painful, so if it provides good info/good links/help.....i dont mind as much.

But its the dairy/opinion ones that drive me nuts. Like I wanted to look up a commercial I saw on tv. 14000 results on google in which 3700 contain the word blog. In the first 10 results, 6 results were blogs. And they were mostly ppl who accidentally looked at the tv and decided to comment. You think id find the companies website? Or the studio who created the commercial (or useful stuff like that). Nope......instead I spend my time sifting through ppls opinions. A few provided a link (and others copied the same link to their blogs) but it really didnt get me anywhere. I shouldnt have to live these ppl's lives just to find a damn link.

A great example yesterday......i did a search with the word 'brain' in it. In the first 10 results, i end up on a blog reading about some a-holes aunts blueberry pie (i dont actually know what it was.......but it wasnt anything i was looking for!!).

For me, i dont see a difference between publishing these blogs and publishing everyones personal AIM conversatsions / email (which would really slow searching down). I mean having friends is fine.....but keep it personal in my opinion.

See that, you can't even lookup " girl boy sex **** photo " without hitting a blog or two. What is this world coming to? There's not even any porn sites in those results.



(lol)

Again it's not the blog's fault that they come up in those listings, it's that the companies web site is not as search engine friendly and doesn't receive as much traffic as the blogs do. Or you could blame Google for having their engine written in a way that promotes blogs. But saying someone shouldn't publish their opinions about a certain topic on the internet just because you don't like reading it is ridiculous.

Why shouldn't traditional news media look to blogs for information? Blogs almost always get news first, and it can spread around the internet to hundreds of blogs within a few hours. By the time CNN or a newspaper can cover it, it's old news on the web. A lot of traditional journalists also have blogs. A lot of blogs are well written by very smart individuals, and aren't censored by editors, advertisers, and government agencies. How is that a bad thing? Just because it's new and different?